Localytics tracks how often an app is used on Android and Apple’s iOS devices. It ranks app retention by how often an app is used ranging from once to 11 times or more. Over the past four years it has found apps that have only been used once have decreased by 6% to 20% of all apps with only 16% of Android apps only being used once while apps on Apple devices are at 23%.

Localytics has seen a strong increase in apps used 11 times or more on Android devices the past year going from 34% to 45% while Apple has only seen a small change from 34% to 36%.

Note: to determine the number of times an app is used Localytics measured apps that were downloaded in the third quarter of a calendar year and then how many times they were used by March 15th of the following year.

Localytics has two potential reasons for Android to be performing better. The first is that Apple users could be suffering from app overload since they have a large number of apps installed. Maybe that is part of the reason but since Android devices have most of the same apps as iOS and there are over 1.2 million apps for both platforms I don’t think that is the main reason.

The second reason is that Android devices have a greater variety of form factors, especially larger screens. This makes more sense as users would be less frustrated with a larger screen on Android smartphones and phablets vs. Apple’s offerings.

Android devices are closing the monetization gap with Apple but iOS still drives higher sales and revenue. The following two charts are from the UK and Germany and show that iPad’s revenue per session is higher than Android tablets but that Android apps are starting to catch up in how well they monetize users. Interestingly Kindle Fire’s revenue per session were flat in the UK and down in Germany year over year.

Source: Monetate EQ1 2014 report

Monetate also measured the amount spent when using a traditional device (PC) vs. tablets and smartphones. It found that Apple’s iPad generated the highest revenue for tablets at $160 per order but that Kindle Fire’s were in second place at $122 in the March 2014 quarter. Android tablets were third at $107.

Apple’s iPhones had the lead in smartphones but it was smaller than iPads. iPhone’s average order size was $118 vs. Android in second at $112 and Windows phones were third at $101.

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